


mouth

by Askance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Experimental Style, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a secret. When he holds it back it tears his mouth apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mouth

You are thirteen. You believe yourself to have seen a great deal of the world. You stand in mirrors and picture yourself full up from the feet in dead prairie and wet woods and the bleak bruised sky in a slash across your eyes. You stand in mirrors and imagine billboards sprouting from your head. JESUS SAVES. 15 MILES EXIT RIGHT. WORLD FAMOUS APPLE PIES. No one is allowed to call you _Sammy_ anymore except for him. Maybe.

You are thirteen the first time it happens. You have been looking at him out of the corners of your eyes. You have been watching upperclassmen kiss one another under their breath in the hallways. You have been leaning against cracked and dirty shower walls with your hand resting flat on your stomach thinking about him. You are thirteen and you are thinking maybe, if you told him, he would understand, because you are a child; he could assure you that you’ll outgrow it. You trace the words with your tongue on the inside of your teeth to see how they taste. _I love you, Dean._ You have no clue how he will react. You wonder if he will slap you or ruffle your hair.

He is seventeen. You find him out back with a cigarette between his lips. Immediately your heart falters. You stand there in your untied sneakers and watch the sun slipping dangerously out of the sky behind his head. Everything is cold out here. He looks at you, cigarette a point of light in the shadow of his face. You see him smile at you. You don’t say anything to him.

You are thirteen and turning to go back inside when you feel the pain, as if you’ve caught your cheek between your teeth, and you taste blood. You can feel the split in your flesh with your tongue. You wince and suck it down and close the door behind you.

* * *

 

You are fifteen and you have not outgrown it. You were embarrassed the first time you touched yourself to thoughts of him. You _know_ it’s wrong. You threw up afterwards and he got that dent of worry between his eyebrows when he heard you in the bathroom and he brought you ginger ale and you didn’t tell him then, either. You considered it, but it never left your tongue. It was too scared to climb out of your teeth. The inside of your mouth split open again and you sucked down the blood and the ginger ale stung. You are not sure why this is happening.

It is a strange secret to keep. Sometimes you lie awake listening to him breathe next to you and you mouth it to the ceiling. _I love you._ Sometimes you imagine the face of God up there, carved out of ugly stucco, frowning. You imagine the heaviness of the Bible in the nightstand, so thick it could break the shelf apart. He doesn’t think of you that way. He doesn’t think of you that way.

He is nineteen. Once, you persuade yourself that you have the courage, now—Dad is gone and the stars are out and your feet are bare in the hot dirt and it almost manages to claw its way up from your throat but then it recoils behind your lips and you look at him and he looks at you and smiles, sits more comfortably on the hood of the car, beer between his hands between his knees. Your head is full of nighttime these days. You don’t say it. The cut appears on the inside of your left cheek and you probe it with your tongue as if greeting an old friend.

* * *

 

You are seventeen and maybe you are cursed. Your mouth is sore so often. Every time you feel the shift inside you to say the words into his ear it’s as if _I love you_ turns to steel and presses razor-sharp against your tongue. You never let it out and so it slices up your lips and the insides of your cheeks and your mouth is full of blood.

You look it up in books but no one has heard of a thing like this.

You wish that it would stop. You wish that he was not growing more beautiful by the day. You wish that you could disassociate his eyes from South Dakota grassland and his skin from summer sun and his lingering touch from the stirring in your chest. You fear that if you hold it in much longer you will shred yourself to pieces.

You are seventeen and you have seen a great deal of the world. You have seen him kissing people and felt fire in your bones. You have shouted in your father’s face and fallen down the stairs and climbed entire mountains by yourself.

He is twenty-one and you have never told him what you feel. You try. You try over quiet suppers and games of catch and late nights of research and cleaning guns and every time you duck your head politely to spit the blood into your palm and wash your hands while he looks on and asks _You alright? What happened?_ And you say, _I bit my tongue,_ and it is not a total lie.

* * *

 

You are twenty and you have not seen him in months. He rarely calls and when he does, he does not call you _Sammy._

It is easier to hide the pain inside your mouth and the blood beneath your tongue when he is a thousand thousand miles away.

* * *

 

You are twenty-two when he comes for you and all the way to Jericho you watch yourself in the wing mirror and imagine what the words would look like on your lips. When you were thirteen you had billboards sprouting out of your head and America in your eyes but now you think you have changed irreversibly. You wonder if he even recognises you. You wonder if your voice is the same as he remembers.

You will not tell him now. There is a girl in Palo Alto that you love and loving her does not tear your mouth to shreds.

He is twenty-six and unbelievable.

* * *

 

You are twenty-five and he is not long for this world and you think _now, now, tell him now, or you’ll never get the chance._ You stand in mirrors and watch yourself and wonder how you look when he looks at you. How his hands would look, here, and here. How his mouth would feel against your own. Soft and soft. You stand in mirrors and picture a ragged MISSING poster stapled just above your heart.

He asks if you want to tell him something, anything, anything at all. You shake your head. _I love you_ slices savagely against your upper lip and you flinch and suck down the blood and it is bitter.

* * *

 

You are twenty-seven and the world is going to end and you are going willingly to it and you are terrified.

You stand in mirrors and picture yourself an empty thing but for the crushing bigness of your love for him and this, too, is terrifying.

He sits quietly with you on the very last night and holds his face in his hands. He is just as scared as you. He is thirty-one and childishly afraid.

You think, _tell him. There is nothing after this._ You sit where you sit and you look at him. Somewhere in your gut you know that this is something you will never have. You have grown up in love with him and he has called you _Sammy,_ his _Sammy,_ his _baby brother_ for so long but in all probability you never had a chance. Small comfort to know that he will love you forever but not in the ways that you want.

_You okay?_ he asks you, knowing you could not possibly answer _yes._ Your mind screams _I love you I love you I love you I love you_ but there are no longer hours enough left to hold all of that so you hold it back. You won’t say it. You won’t. You will spare him this. _I love you I love you I love you_ and your mouth is slashed apart and your throat is full of blood. He looks at you, sad and afraid, and you duck your head politely. Swallow the red salt down. And it keeps coming and your mind keeps screaming and your lips are criss-crossed on the inside with cuts on cuts on cuts and you swallow, swallow, swallow.

_Sammy?_ he says.

_I bit my tongue,_ you say.


End file.
